Page 41 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)

It was a scene of horror and sorrow. Grown men reduced to helpless animals, unable to care for themselves or each other.

A few women moved from man to man, but they, too, looked as if they were the walking sick, haunted by what they did and failed to do.

If he weren’t mistaken, there were several dead bodies lying around, already passed on to the heavens with or without the salvation offered by the priest, who was bent over one guard in the middle of the room.

With most of the guards ill, his job just got much easier. But whatever illness plagued these men, it was surely in the fetid air. He pulled his shirt over his mouth and nose. Then reached for hers.

“Cover your mouth and nose,” he ordered, so that she might focus on him. Her gaze traveled up one end of the great room and down the other, taking in the desperate and the dying and the dead. He put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her shirt up over her nose. “We must go.”

Her eyes had grown large, her argument there on the tip of her lips as she shook her head back and forth in dismay. She would not leave the sick and dying, not without him pushing her to do so.

“You cannot help them.”

Her silence said everything. She wanted to help. She couldn’t.

“Astley needs you. Your family needs you. I need you. Focus on that.”

He took her wrist and pulled her along as he ducked into the narrow doorway the boy had disappeared through.

In the dim light, the child stood waiting for them in front of an oak door almost as thick as the exterior entries, his big brown eyes glued to where Elias held Máira’s delicate wrist. Elias looked down to where the boy’s eyes were glued.

Contrast between man and woman as blatant as if they stood naked.

He dropped her hand as quickly as if she scalded him, but not before the boy noticed the contrast between Máira’s creamy smooth, soft skin and his bronzed roughened hand.

“Vous voulez bien l'aider, mademoiselle?”

“Oi.” Máira responded with an earnest nod to the boy’s question.

Merde . She was going to get them killed with her equally sincere response that she was a young miss who would help the man closeted behind that door.

Her admission left Elias looking around them.

Sounds from another room came from his right and he stepped forward to look inside.

It was a kitchen of sorts, with exhausted, stressed women who were cooking soups, cutting vegetables, and boiling cloths and medicinals.

Elias stepped back.

The boy pushed open the heavy door that led to what had once been a meat larder, but now contained a pallet on the floor, where a man lay still and silent.

Elias grabbed at the boy, but the boy batted at his hand and ran to the unkempt prisoner, who appeared too sick, injured, or possibly dead to do anything but lie with his back to the door.

A tattered blanket covered a large frame that held little more than skin and bone.

Elias removed his knife from his belt and approached with caution as the boy shook at the man’s shoulder in a futile attempt to wake him.

Elias gently moved the desperate boy aside.

The man was well over six feet tall, but his frame had been reduced to frailty.

His dark hair, long and unkempt. Months of growth covered hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes rimmed with dark circles.

The entire effect gave the man the look of a skull covered in skin and hair.

He rolled the man onto his back and watched his arms flop toward the floor with no resistance. It was Máira who spoke first, as she bent over the unconscious earl, lying half dead.

“Simon! I’m here. It’s Máira.” She pulled his hand into hers. “Caillen’s sister.”

“She’s a horrible spy.” The boy commented in broken English.

Elias bit his lip, wanting to agree, yet knowing he couldn’t.

Reverting to his native French, the boy said, “I thought you were a soldier, but now I see you’re not. Are you here to take him away?”

Elias studied the boy. Dirty clothes hung on his filthy body. He was malnourished with deep sorrow etched in his face. His expression bled the tears his dry eyes did not. A child his age shouldn’t know that amount of grief. And there was concern—for Astley.

He bent down and let the truth be known, despite the risk of it coming back to bite him in the arse. “I’m here to take him home. She’s helping.”

“She’s going to get you caught.”

He shook his head and pointed to the woman in full-blown healer mode.

Despite how shaken Máira had been at the ghastly sight of so many in need, she was in complete control of her emotions now, as she dug in her pouch and began pulling out herbs along with a flask and a small stone mortar and pestle to grind up her concoctions.

He had no idea where she had obtained them.

“She was taken off-guard by how many people are suffering. She has a soft heart. Now she has a purpose that will drive her to do what needs to be done.”

The boy still viewed her skeptically, so he continued. “If it weren’t for her, we would have never made it this far. What’s your name?”

“Sébastien,” the boy said with a lift of his chin. The pride he felt in his name evident.

“Well then, Sébastien. It looks as though I will need your assistance as well. Can I rely upon you?” He held out his hand, waiting to see if the boy would grasp it, or leave him no choice but to lock him up while they escaped.

Sébastien’s little hand got lost in his.

So young, so frail with skin roughened by hardship—the boy’s grip a mere pinch of his palm.

His eyes, however, did not waver. They held the strength and conviction of a survivor as he proclaimed, “On my father’s grave, I swear the earl will not suffer his fate at the hands of the soldiers. ”

Elias did a little swearing himself at that moment.

He silently vowed the boy would never know the earl’s fate, because the chances of Astley surviving were worse than their chances of escaping.

He looked at his pocket watch. Half-past two in the morning.

They were already late to beat the tide and he had no idea how to get his wife and the earl off this damned island.